Yes I know, it is no more “Picasa”, nowadays man must write “Google+ photos”.Yes, but it is still “Picasa” as you need to download it first. Thank you Google, I love you, but your engineering inconsistency is typical of the geeks I know so well! So I will try to clarify the mess due to a somewhat clumsy if not incomplete integration of the 3 services
Basically, Picasa used to be:
– A way to store pictures on line,
– A way to share pictures on line,
– A catalog software with some easy to use features for improving your pictures.
Google implemented Google+ but created a confusion as some services of Picasa are still available. More important, Google Drive has been released later than Google+, which added to the confusion as some services of the former Picasa (like storing on the cloud your pictures) was not feasible but thanks to the older Picasa services. Even more confusing, you can still do the same thing thanks to both services, but you don’t get the same result! (tip: you can still use Picasa the old way) and you don’t do it the same way!
Drive is much better than the former storing services of Picasa, as your files structure looks like the same way than on your desktop/laptop (at last!) and not the stupid flat way of Picasa’s storing services. For some people, sharing with Google+ is not exactly better than with Picasa as long as your contacts don’t belong too to Google+, and frankly can be confusing. But at the end of the day, that’s the future and I think people can share much more easily thanks to social network compare with the old fashioned way (emails!). So yes, you need to learn how to do it and your contact should join Google+. I believe that’s a great photosharing service for private pictures, much better than Facebook thanks to Google privacy options and policy.
As a photos catalog software (Edit/Organize/Publish), Picasa is still Picasa and compare with others, I like it even if far from being perfect. I think the main advantage is the speed display of the (big) thumbnails which is, as far as I know, so far unchallenged by, for instance Lightroom. However, this software looks of course much better in many ways, but as a pure catalog software, I just prefer Picasa. The trade off with Lightroom is not easy, for many users, as improving pictures is much better with Lightroom. But that’s something else. Let’s come back to Google+ and Picasa!
Google has let some Picasa’s feature alive which are actually very disturbing and should not be used: you can still “Sync” your albums, so you might use this feature for storing. Bad idea, as explained before, do it with Drive. “Sync” is only useful when you want to share an album. So that’s how you should work with Google+ Photos/Picasa:
– Use Picasa as a catalog software to delete, classify, and organize your pictures, enhancing them (the crop feature is a must, others are not as good, but can do the job very often) simultaneously,
– Store then online thanks to Drive (or competitors like Dropbox),
– Create files for albums of the best photos you want to share,
– Sync them online, and share them thanks to Google+
And my final word: enhance the pictures thanks to Lightroom, after having deleted and organize them thanks to Picasa. Share them with Google+ for private picture, or with the other photosharing services (Facebook, Flickr) for those you want to make public. Yes that’s a lot of software but in software, there is often no holly grail. So you need several of them to do the job efficiently.